


I. Fire

by velithya



Series: Fire/Ice [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIII
Genre: F/F, gen - Freeform, pre slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 03:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velithya/pseuds/velithya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fang doesn't know why people compare Lightning to ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I. Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Fang-Lightning](http://fang-lightning.dreamwidth.org) Holiday Prompt 20th December: Fire.  
> Originally posted at the livejournal and dreamwidth communities on 21st December 2010.

**I. Fire**

Fang doesn't know why people compare Lightning to ice.

Sure, on the surface she's closed off, remote, nothing to see in her face but your own emotions, reflected back to you. And she can cut deep, too, her words piercing like jagged shards.

But it's all superficial, and like a river that still runs deep under its frozen surface, Lightning is much more than that - after all, she learned Fire before she learned Blizzard.

Because underneath all the walls and the words and the emotional distance, Lightning _burns_.

Fang can see it in her, all the time, in the back of her eyes. Oh, it shows through more visibly, sometimes - the flashes of temper she displays, the tinge of desperation in her tone when she speaks of Serah, or their Focus - things that the others can see, can take notice of. But Fang sees more deeply than them, or perhaps just more clearly. And what she can _see_ -

Lightning's lost, tossed and battered in the firestorm of her own emotions. She feels everything, and so strongly, that without an anchor she has nothing to ground on, nothing to help her take control. And yet even so, she has enough strength to wall it all in, to hide it away - to be the perfect soldier the Guardian Corps wanted.

Fang wonders, sometimes, how long Lightning's been like this. If she even knows, anymore, what's real and what's just another wall. Fang's not the least damaged among them, not by far - but she thinks she might be able to help. Lightning's not the talking type, but if Fang can help her let loose some of that fire, it might quieten the storm.

And maybe then, maybe with the inferno in hand, Fang might get to see her smile - her real smile, not the one that finds it way through her walls, half-frozen and constrained. She's sure it would be warm and glowing, contagious, lighting up the faces of everyone around her.

And as she sits, looking through the flames of their tiny fire at Lightning, haloed on the other side in flickering light, she wonders what it would take for her to put it there.


End file.
